oads, and since anything is cover to men who
are surrounded and outnumbered, they made for that tree with one accord,
and without a word from Brown.

"We've all the luck," said Brown. "There's not a detachment of any other
army in the world would walk straight on to a find like this!"

He held up one frayed end of a manila rope, that was wound around the
tree-trunk. Some tethered ox had rendered them that service.

"Fifty feet of good manila, and a fakir that needs hanging! Anybody see
the connection?"

There was a chorus of ready laughter, and the two men who had the
unenviable task of carrying the fakir picked him up and tossed him to
the tree-trunk. The roof of the guardhouse was blazing fiercely, and now
they had fired the other roofs. The fakir, the tree and the little bunch
of men who held him prisoner were as plainly visible as though it had
been daytime. A bullet pinged past Brown's ear, and buried itself in the
tree-trunk with a thud.

"Let him feel that bayonet again!" said Brown.

A rifleman obeyed, and the fakir howled aloud. An answering howl from
somewhere beyond the dancing shadows told that the fakir had been
understood.

"And now," said Brown, paraphrasing the well-remembered wording of the
drill-book, in another effort to get his men to laughing again, "when
hanging a fakir by numbers--at the word one, place the noose smartly
round the fakir's neck. At the word two, the right-hand man takes the
bight of the rope in the hollow of his left hand, and climbs the tree,
waiting on the first branch suitable for the last sound of the word
three. At the last sound of the word three, he slips the rope smartly
over the bough of the tree and descends smartly to the ground, landing
on the balls of his feet and coming to attention. At the word four, the
remainder seize the loose end of the rope, being careful to hold it in
such a way that the fakir has a chance to breathe. And at the last
sound of the word five, you haul all together, lifting the fakir off the
ground, and keeping him so until ordered to release. Now--one!"

He had tied a noose while he was speaking, and the fakir had watched him
with eyes that blazed with hate. A soldier seized the noose, and slipped
it over the fakir's head.

"Two!"

The tree was an easy one to climb. "Two" and "three" were the work of
not more than a minute.

"Four!" commanded Brown, and the rope drew tight across the bough. The
fakir had to strain his chin upward in